


The Only Home There Is

by in_motu_proprio



Series: World War May [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Anniversary, Car Sex, Cunnilingus, Established Relationship, F/M, GH-325, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Oral Sex, Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 11:35:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2466758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_motu_proprio/pseuds/in_motu_proprio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This part of the series takes place between season one and season two of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  It begins directly after the end of the last episode of season one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Home There Is

**_2014, The Playground_ **

“May… May.” Melinda sat straight up in her new bed. Phil, it was Phil. She set down the knife she kept between the mattress and the box spring and rolled over. “May, wake up.” 

“I’m up, Phil. What the hell?” Melinda rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. He was on the verge of getting his ass chewed out, but it only took one look at him to know that something was seriously wrong. “Woah… what?” She sat up and gave him her full attention as she scanned for possible threats. 

“Come with me.” May followed him without question, wondering how he wasn’t freezing standing barefoot in the halls. Phil had told her to follow him before, but usually it didn’t end with the two of them standing in front of a giant wall that Phil had carved up. 

She stepped forward to outline one of the circles, looking back at him with questions in her eyes. “What is it?” They were quiet, whispering and standing closer. “Phil…” 

“I don’t know. I just… I couldn’t sleep. All I could think of was this.” He waved his hand wildly at the etching. “I’m … it’s starting, isn’t it?” His hands were shaking and Melinda immediately reached out to take his pulse. It was fast, but it was strong. She checked his eyes and saw nothing out of the ordinary other than panic. 

“Come on.” She kept his hand in hers and tugged her toward the hall. May took a minute to lock down the area before bringing Phil back to his room. In the full light, she could see he was pale and a little sweaty. Other than the fact that he was shaken to his core, Phil looked like Phil. “Maybe it’s just a stress reaction.” Melinda went to the small bathroom and got a washcloth nice and wet with cold water. “You’ve been perfectly stable other than this.” She wrung it out and came back to him, laying the cloth across the back of his neck. Her hand cupped the cloth, pressing it in and feeling the way his body relaxed into her touch. “Tell me from the beginning.”

May listened as Phil outlined the whole event. From a persistent thought tickling the back of his brain to unease then to panic, and finally desperation, she stayed with him. It was a compulsion, then. They could figure that one out if they had time and if she could get his brain working right. “I need you to stay here, ok? I’m going to go take care of it, but I need you to stay where you are.” Phil nodded dumbly. May stroked her hand over his cheek and down the back of his neck. “Your word.” 

“My word,” he agreed before she headed out at a quick clip, locking his door on the way. She cleaned up the evidence as quickly as she could. Mostly she had to deal with that wall. He’d ripped the thing apart. In the end, she decided to enter it into the security logs as an attempt to recreate Garrett’s designs. She edited the security footage to reflect that and then hurried back to Phil. All-in-all it had been maybe an hour, hour and a half. Melinda was shaken up and worried about what she’d find on the other side of his door. When she opened it, though, she laughed. 

Phil was sitting in the middle of his bed in his t-shirt and pajama pants, but also with a pair of white cotton gloves and a reading lamp to help him see his sacred, vintage Captain America comic books. “Some things never change.” Phil looked up, seeming wholly himself now. “Good choice, though.” Melinda moved into the room fully, closing the door behind her. “Those always calm you down.”

Phil looked up at her through his dark framed glasses. She always thought of Clark Kent and Superman when he wore those glasses. “What did you do?” Phil put the comics away as Melinda outlined her actions. She was smart and he was lucky to have her as his right hand. Melinda made sure he knew that he was safe, that she’d done everything she could to keep this between them. What was it, though? It had to be the GH325 since it was what Coulson and Garrett had in common. 

“You need to talk to me, Phil. Tell me what happened.” Melinda sat facing him, legs crossed. She didn’t rush him or urge him on as he paused and struggled. Instead she sat still and listened. Melinda slowly put together a timeline. She’d bet a million dollars that what was happening to him right now was stress-induced. This was what other patients who’d taken the GH325 had gone through, and it had been a quick descent after. Phil looked ok, though. His pulse was quick and his mind was clearly struggling to cope with all of this, but he was still Phil and he’d come to her for help. That said something. 

“We need to establish guidelines. I can’t be Director and stay unchecked.” May looked up, surprised at the turn of conversation, but rolling with it. It was what he needed to do to gain control and she understood that. So that was how they spent the next two hours. The two of them sketched out a protocol for how to proceed. In the end, Melinda was going to do whatever she felt necessary to keep him safe and healthy, but she’d do this little dance if that’s what he needed. After two hours, there were timelines and check-in procedures established. She’d also gotten him to agree to stay out of the field and to run things from the Playground. That had been hard-won, but eventually he’d caved. It might have been exhaustion more than agreement that made him cave, though. He’d sunk down into the bed over the course of the night, his head winding up in her lap, her fingers stroking through his hair, rubbing the tense muscles under his scalp.

**********************************************************************************************

**  
_February 2002, Palestine_   
**

Fourteen years. They’d been married for fourteen years, together for another four before that. How was that even possible? Phil had been hers for half her life no. No matter what, no matter how bad it got or how many times he ‘died’, they could always come back to bed to reset. Right now for example, she hadn’t seen him for over three months, yet her fingers were sunk into his hair, hips rolling against his face. It felt like no time had passed at all. Phil was always eager to please, ready and happy to go to his knees for her whenever she wanted. Considering her feelings on oral sex before Phil, the fact that she was a twisting ball of muscle under his mouth said a whole lot. At first Melinda had told him she wasn’t fond of oral sex, which wasn’t a lie at the time. Phil didn’t push it, and she thought it was done, but when Phil wanted something he didn’t stop until he got it. It wasn’t as though their sex life had been lacking before, but after the first time he brought her off with his mouth, Melinda had been obsessed with Phil’s face between her thighs. 

May’s fingers ran through Phil’s hair as he worked her into a lather. He had told her a long time ago that she was the only person who’d ever made him like having his hair touched. Even if he hadn’t, Melinda didn’t think she could have stopped herself when he was laying face first against her. Phil's fingers pushed into her, angling down to give her body a gentle stretch. May loved how Phil could put pressure in all the right places with just a twitch of his finger. She stroked the back of his neck and gave him his name over and over, whispers filling the gaps between them. It might have been their anniversary, but they were in the field at the moment. So instead of a nice dinner and maybe some dancing followed by a fancy hotel room and lots of crazy sex, Phil was devouring her in the back of a Humvee on the outskirts of Palestine. “Phil…” Her voice was thin and Melinda felt him smile against her. There was no living with him when he got her to moan like that. 

A few moments later, Phil had her cumming around his fingers and against his face. May's fingers gripped his shoulder and the back of his neck as she rode against his face, trying to stifle herself by turning her face into their discarded clothes. When she started to come down, May realized her thighs were clamped hard around his head. She relaxed a little bit, sighing as his fingers slipped from her. Phil made obscene sounds as his mouth closed on her again. “Ah!” Her hand came down on his shoulder harder than she intended, hard enough to bruise, but he was the one going for a second orgasm already so it was his fault. 

“Greedy b…bastard.” She felt that smile again and felt his tongue push into her. The sensation was nice, but it wasn’t all that had her writhing. Phil made these soft grunts of appreciation when he drove his tongue into her. He’d once told her that it was like having the purest form of her seeping into his pores. If it were anyone else, she’d have laughed in their face, but Phil’s voice around a sentiment like that made her heart skip a beat. 

“Phil… come on… let me…. “ May’s head fell back as his tongue lapped a long stripe from back to front, landing at her clit. “Phil….” Her toes curled toward the soles of her feet as he sucked. Everything was even more sensitive now and he was relentless. Suck, release. Suck, release… over and over until she was grabbing for the back of his head again and pushing him down against her. If he insisted she go again, then so be it. She was not going to argue when he was sucking her clit like that. “Fingers….” She didn’t have to say any more than that. Two fingers met her body and pushed in without hesitation. She was slick and her body was hungry for him. 

“Phil…” He picked up her need and gave her a good rhythm, hard pushes that stretched that tendon at her pelvis and made her feel full. It made her feel like she was being fucked, not fingered, and May had to throw a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. He knew how to play her like a violin and Phil was doing some of his very best work at the moment. Her mouth opened to tell him that, but instead of praise, she let out a filthy string of obscenities as her body threw itself into orgasm again. It wasn’t until she was trembling on the floor of the Humvee that he stopped, taking a moment between her legs to just touch her. Phil was a relentless bastard and May adored him for it. It was sexual because this was sex, but it was more adoring, sort of a check-in. It took her a few minutes of laying there panting, letting him stroke her skin and kiss her throat for Melinda to recover enough to make any sense. She just looked up at him, perpetually in awe of how he could wreck her. How had she gotten so lucky? 

They hadn’t planned on any of this, well she hadn’t. But they were off comms for another 20 minutes and she wanted more. “Fuck me.” May didn’t have to ask twice. Phil was already between her legs and Melinda could feel that he was hard and more than ready. Phil kissed her as he quickly shoved his pants down and pushed in, groaning her name against her mouth. This was another thing she’d never been into before him. Kissing after oral had bothered her for years. Guys would want to do it and she’d shy away. It was dirty, it was unsanitary, it wasn’t what ‘good girls’ did. Regardless of who she was now, everyone’s upbringing did play into their sexual hang ups, but the crazy bastard between her legs made her reconsider more than just tasting herself on his mouth. Phil made it feel like the only natural choice, though. Not kissing him right now would have felt wrong. 

Phil grabbed her at the waist and moved her like she was nothing, May was only too happy to spread her legs and wrap them around his waist as he found a good angle for the two of them. Phil wouldn’t last long, he never did after he’d gone face first into her lap. There was a certain amount of satisfaction in that, which she’d cop to in a second if pressed. _My husband can’t fuck for more than five minutes without cumming after he sucks me off._ Melinda kissed him again and squeezed herself around his cock as hard as she could. His eyes rolled up in his head a moment and his hips paused mid-thrust. She’d taken him off guard and May delighted in that. “Go hard, Phil.” Again, she didn’t have to ask twice. Phil grabbed her hips and let loose. Pride filled Melinda as he had her, and she used every bit of muscle she had to push him over the edge before they had to go back on duty.

**********************************************************************************************

**  
_2014, The Playground_   
**

Phil's hair had gotten thinner in the intervening years, but it was still soft and baby-fine under her fingers. He'd had fallen asleep an hour ago, but May couldn’t bring herself to leave him. He looked like a boy when his face was soft like this, and she knew exactly how vulnerable he was right now. Phil was a mess and he was desperately clinging to her so that she could make it better. He’d as much as said that when they were discussing their protocol. Phil shifted in her lap, wrapping his arm around her and tugging. “Lay down.” He was shifting, pulling at her, and May sighed deeply. It was a bad idea. She should have left when he was really asleep. Half-asleep Phil was more dangerous than the fully passed out boyish Phil. 

May wasn’t going to leave him, though. She assured him that she would come back before sliding out of bed and ducking into the bathroom. She closed the door behind her, thinking about how the hell they were going to make it through this. Phil would struggle because he was going through some sort of alien hell. She’d struggle because this was going to drive even more intimacy into their routine. She didn’t need to be fighting herself and all their enemies on a daily basis. 

Melinda splashed some water on her face and made the decision to go back to him. Pain or not, she wasn’t going to leave him like this. If she was really honest, she’d acknowledge that she never planned to leave the man’s side again. They’d both hurt each other deeply over the years, but she knew how bad it was to really lose him. Melinda took a few deep breaths and opened the bathroom door. She went back to him, climbing into Phil’s bed again and letting him wrap his arms around her, still half asleep. Phil held her close and nuzzled his chin in against her shoulder before he settled back to sleep. It was good that he could sleep, because May didn’t think sleep was going to find her for quite some time.


End file.
